Good Transistor Or Short Wave Radios?

[Suicane75]

I want to sit in my backyard and listen baseball games during the summer months. Ideally I'd like to easily get anything east of the Rockies. Am I looking for transistor, short wave? Special antenna required? I'm in NJ btw.

[PilotMan]

Spend 20 bucks on MLB Gameday Audio and stream whatever you want.

It will be way less frustrating than trying to tune in a radio that may or may not work and no blackouts.

[Suicane75]

Appreciate the advice, but that's not what I'm looking for.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

I want to sit in my backyard and listen baseball games during the summer months. Ideally I'd like to easily get anything east of the Rockies. Am I looking for transistor, short wave? Special antenna required? I'm in NJ btw.

Simplest answer is an old-fashioned transistor radio I suspect. I mean, like the ones I used in north Georgia as a kid to listen to St. Louis & Cincinnati with (as well as Fort Wayne Komet hockey on WOWO). The key is "clear channel stations", not the ownership group but the 50k or 100k blowtorch signals that don't get any interference 'cause nobody else is on the same frequency.

Now the trickier parts of that answer are
a) how many teams are still on those kind of signals? Unsure, not as many as there used to be for sure


and

b) does anybody even make those radios like that anymore, aside from maybe a collectors type thing? Haven't seen a new one in years.

edit to add: Okay, now that I looked back & saw where you are ... you've kinda got my opposite issue in terms of stations when I grew up. KMOX & WLW were easy peasy to get at night, had middling success with WWWE ("3WE") in Cleveland, everything had to be just perfect for me to hear anything out of New York though, likewise Pittsburgh.

Atlanta would be iffy for you ... except they've been long ago relegated to lesser stations so you ain't gonna pick that signal up anymore anyway. I'd say Florida stations are out of the question for you too. Anybody else east of the Rockies that I haven't mentioned I don't recall ever hearing back in those late night dial twisting days.

Find (likely on mlb.com somewhere) a listing of all the flagship stations for the teams, compare that list to a listing of "clear channel AM stations". That'll tell you pretty much what your chances are if you go this route.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I mean, like the ones I used in north Georgia as a kid to listen to St. Louis & Cincinnati with (as well as Fort Wayne Komet hockey on WOWO).

I used to do that as a kid too from maybe 45 minutes south of where you were. I don't remember getting St. Louis, but I definitely had Cincy and the Detroit Tigers, as well as I think Houston Astros on some nights? I remember for a while in the early 1980s I think it was that the USA Today even had a small section in their paper each week listing what AM stations you could use to try to pick up what games in various parts of the country.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

Appreciate the advice, but that's not what I'm looking for.

[OldGiants]

As a kid in NJ, I listened at night to sports from as far away as St Louis. KMOX, I think. There was a station in Ft Wayne, Indiana that had sports and music that all us high school kids listened to.

My radio was an old unit that I did some odd things to with the tuning coil inside that allowed me to move the band lower than the normal end of the AM spectrum so I often got SW stuff.

My advice is get the best aerial attachment you can. Wire and aluminum foil worked swell in the 1960's, but there is likely cheaper and far more efficient units out there. I know I got an aerial that allows my wife to listen to a Va Beach station (we are west of Richmond) she likes.